Police say speed and alcohol are likely factors in a single-vehicle crash that sent two women to hospital with serious injuries early Tuesday morning.
According to North Vancouver RCMP, the driver of the Lexus SUV was travelling northbound in the 2200 block of Capilano Road, south of the Upper Levels on-ramp, just before 2 a.m. when the vehicle careened off to the right, through several fences and into a front yard where it flipped onto its side.
Chicory Lane resident Frank Alasti was one of the first on the scene.
“I heard the scream and I jumped out,” he said.
With other bystanders looking on and before first responders arrived, Alasti pulled one of the women from the wreck.
“When I pulled her out, I right away took her pulse. She was alive. I put her on her side because she was choking on blood. It was on her face – ripped,” he said.
B.C. Ambulance Service paramedics rushed the driver, a 23-year-old North Vancouver woman and her passenger, a 28-year-old North Vancouver woman, to Lions Gate Hospital. They are expected to survive, De Jong said.
“Without the airbags, it would have been a different story,” De Jong said.
The car, however, was a total writeoff, he added.
North Vancouver RCMP called in the Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service to investigate the exact cause of the crash, shutting down Capilano Road for most of the night. The lanes were reopened by the morning rush hour.
The same block of Capilano Road was the scene of another major collision, on Boxing Day. That crash resulted in only minor injuries, but knocked out power to more than 13,000 properties from Norgate to the British Properties. In that case, one of the vehicles involved in the crash ended up in Alasti’s yard.
